Published 1889. It is not in the Virginia trial edition of 1889. Its subject is the death in April 1886 of T.’s son Lionel (born 1854) in the Red Sea when returning from India where he had caught fever. His host had been Lord Dufferin (1826–1902), the Governor-General of India (1884–8) and an old friend of T.’s. Dufferin took care of Lionel for the months of his illness before the fatal journey. Since the poem acts as the introduction to 1889 (see ll. 15–16), it was probably written in that year or in 1888 (supported by its placing in H.Nbk 55). T. would have had it in mind since 1886. He uses the In Memoriam stanza. Martin (pp. 558–9) compares In Memoriam vi 13–16 (p. 350).
I
At times our Britain cannot rest,
At times her steps are swift and rash;
She moving, at her girdle clash
The golden keys of East and West.
II
Not swift or rash, when late she lent
The sceptres of her West, her East,
To one, that ruling has increased
Her greatness and her self-content.
III
Your rule has made the people love
Their ruler. Your viceregal days
Have added fulness to the phrase
Of ‘Gauntlet in the velvet glove.’
IV
But since your name will grow with Time,
Not all, as honouring your fair fame
Of Statesman, have I made the name
A golden portal to my rhyme:
V
But more, that you and yours may know
From me and mine, how dear a debt
We owed you, and are owing yet
To you and yours, and still would owe.
VI
For he – your India was his Fate,
And drew him over sea to you –
He fain had ranged her through and through,
To serve her myriads and the State, –
VII
A soul that, watched from earliest youth,
And on through many a brightening year,
Had never swerved for craft or fear,
By one side-path, from simple truth;
VIII
Who might have chased and claspt Renown
And caught her chaplet here – and there
In haunts of jungle-poisoned air
The flame of life went wavering down;
IX
But ere he left your fatal shore,
And lay on that funereal boat,
Dying, ‘Unspeakable’ he wrote
‘Their kindness,’ and he wrote no more;
X
And sacred is the latest word;
And now the Was, the Might-have-been,
And those lone rites I have not seen,
And one drear sound I have not heard,
XI
Are dreams that scarce will let me be,
Not there to bid my boy farewell,
When That within the coffin fell,
Fell – and flashed into the Red Sea,
XII
Beneath a hard Arabian moon
And alien stars. To question, why
The sons before the fathers die,
Not mine! and I may meet him soon;
XIII
But while my life’s late eve endures,
Nor settles into hueless gray,
My memories of his briefer day
Will mix with love for you and yours.
¶427. 1–4. Sir Charles Tennyson (1931, p. 74) points out that these lines had been Hail Briton! 21–4: ‘For Britain had an hour of rest;/But now her steps’ etc., verbatim (I 521).
2. At… steps] Her steps at times T.Nbk 27, trial edition or proofs, corrected then. 6. Dufferin had been Governor-General of Canada, 1872–8.
7–8. Cp. Ode on Wellington 170 ^?71: ‘Perchance our greatness will increase’.
10–12. Dufferin’s rule in India was characterized by a strengthening of the army and by many military operations.
19. owed you, and] feel that we trial edn, corrected then.
21–4. Lionel’s work in the India Office, including a Blue Book, had been very successful (Mem. ii 322–3). Jowett wrote to the Tennysons, 12 Dec. 1858 (Mem. i 434) suggesting a subject for T.: ‘The subject I mean is “In Memoriam” for the dead in India. It might be done so as to include some scenes of Cawnpore and Lucknow; or quite simply and slightly, “Relatives in India”, the Schemings and hopings and imaginings about them, and the fatal missive suddenly announcing their death. They leave us in the fairness and innocence of youth, with nothing but the vision of their childhood and boyhood to look back upon, and return no more. Perhaps you know what sets my thoughts upon this, the death of my dear brother, the second who had died in India.’
25–8. Cp. the similar praise of the dead Lionel in Locksley Hall Sixty Years After 59–60 (p. 643).
39. lone] last trial edn, corrected then.
41–2] But sounds, shapes, shadows, trouble me,
Black decks, sea-whirl, muffled bell, H.Nbk 55 1st reading
42–6. F. T. Palgrave, in an article set up in type but not published (Lincol̄n), juxtaposed these lines with an extract from ‘the Melbourne Argus of the 24th of July [1886], written by a fellow-passenger on board the vessel; as the short personal description gave a sad pleasure to the bereaved father: “No mistaking the likeness [to Lord Tennyson] in the massive head, the flowing beard and hair, as he lay, pale and wan, on a couch on deck. Six hours afterwards, at nine o’clock, the crew is mustered by the tolling of a muffled bell… A reverend clergyman and missionary reads the beautiful Burial Service of the Church of England, which seems more impressive here than on shore. There are many wet eyes at the words ‘We therefore commit’… Then the coffin slides with a solemn splash into the dark water, a bubble of phosphorescent light is seen for a moment, the waves close over it, and broken voices repeat Our Father”…’ (TRB ii, 1972, 20). T.’s ‘flashed’ is illuminated by the phosphorescence; and cp. also ll. 34, 47.
48. Not mine] Vain, vain H.MS.